BRETTON WOODS AGREEMENT

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25082, 14 January 1947, Page 4

BRETTON WOODS AGREEMENT

VIEW OF AUSTRALIAN LABOUR TOUR BY MR CHIFLEY (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, Jan. 6. Melbourne newspapers last week carried photographs showing the Prime Minister of Australia (Mr J. B. Chifley) at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, smoking his pipe and r watching the third Test match. Later he slipped off to Tasmania, and he is expected soon to be in South Australia. It has become obvious 'that the Prime Minister is on no social tour but on a very businesslike one.

Wherever he goes, Mr Chifley is talking to local labour leaders, and his subject is the Bretton Woods financial agreement. Mr Chifley was beaten on the voting in the Federal caucus of the Australian Labour Party when he suggested that Australia should ratify the agreement. Caucus decided to refer the whole question to a special Federal Australian Labour Party Conference, and the Minister for Transport (Mr E. Ward) was the chief opponent of ratification. Canberra onlookers believe that Mr Chifley quietly went on his southern tour because he heard that Mr Ward was busily writing pamphlets as propaganda against Australia’s ratification of Bretton Woods.

Tasmanian labour leaders are very opposed to an Australian endorsement of Bretton Woods, and Mr Chifley is thought to believe that if he can swing Tasmanian labour into agreeing that Australia should give her endorsement, then he can swing most of the State party executives. This sort of salesmanship cannot, of course, he done casually over a telephone. It needs a personal appearance. In Victoria, the Minister for PostWar Reconstruction (Mr Dedman) is crusading among labour branches for Mr Chifley’s cause. Simultaneously the Minister of Labour (Mr Holloway) and the Minister of Information and Immigration (Mr Calwell) are campaigning against him. Under the rules of the Australian Labour Party a special Federal Conference (such as that which woul(i consider the Bretton Woods agreement) can only be held if four Statp executives jointly convene it, and it is beginning to look as though four State executives will make no such.move. If caucus still refused the ratification of Bretton Woods it would then have the right to'send the matter for discussion to the triennial Australian Labour Party conference, which is not due until 1948.